Help:Wiki markup

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This page is a tutorial for learning to work with the essential rules of wiki-formatted text, or "wikitext". Wikitext is designed to be as simple as possible so that an article may be quickly typed and styled without having to take a break to type out long HTML codes. The goal is to make it as easy as possible to channel your thoughts into writing the perfect article (or even a not-so-perfect article!).

Text formatting

Creating italicized or bold text is the simplest rule — simply use the apostrophe character in groups of two or three to create the style. (Be sure to use the "straight" apostrophe and not the curved "smart quote" characters used in some text editors and word processors!)

What you type What you see
''italicized text'' italicized text
'''bold text''' bold text
'''''italicized and bold text''''' italicized and bold text

To create a tabbed list or a block of text using a monospace font, start the line with a space. (Be sure not to make the line too long, or it will stretch the page horizontally!) Text can also be indented in blockquotes using the colon character.

What you type What you see

Preformatted text 

Preformatted text
: Indented text
Indented text

Lists

Both unordered and numbered lists are simple to create as well: simply use the asterisk or hash characters at the beginning of a line to create the entry. To create nested lists, simply add an extra asterisk or hash to the front of the line. You can even mix and match the kinds of list in a single group!

What you type What you see
* Item One
* Item Two
  • Item One
  • Item Two
# Item One
# Item Two
  1. Item One
  2. Item Two
* Item One
** Item Two
  • Item One
    • Item Two
* Item One
*# Item Two
  • Item One
    1. Item Two
; term : definition
term
definition

Links and URLs

In a wiki, it's important to help build the web by creating links to other articles in every appropriate context. Use the following techniques to create "free links" to other Tardis Index File articles:

What you type What you see
[[TARDIS Index File]] TARDIS Index File
[[SS Bernice|SS ''Bernice'']] SS Bernice
[[This article doesn't exist]] This article doesn't exist
[[Tardis:Policies and Guidelines]] Tardis:Policies and Guidelines
[[Tardis:Policies and Guidelines|Policies and Guidelines]] Policies and Guidelines

You can also make external links to other websites using the following formatting rules:

What you type What you see
[[Wikipedia:Doctor Who]] Wikipedia:Doctor Who
[[Wikipedia:Doctor Who|]] Doctor Who
http://tardis.wikicities.com/ http://tardis.wikicities.com/
[http://tardis.wikicities.com/] [1]
[http://tardis.wikicities.com/ TARDIS Index File] TARDIS Index File

The "pipe trick"

One of the most helpful shortcuts one can learn in linking to articles is the so-called "pipe trick". By placing a pipe (|) after certain strings of text, one can eliminate the need to type huge amounts of replacement text. For example, if the name of an episode of Doctor Who is shared with a person, place or thing in the DWU, then it will be "disambiguated" with the parenthetical "(TV story)". Castrovalva refers to the city, whereas Castrovalva (TV story) links to the page about the episode. Generally, when writing a sentence about the TV story, one doesn't want "(TV story)" to appear in the body of text. To get rid of it, one must enter some replacement text separated by the full article name by a pipe (|}. The long way of doing that is: 

[[Castrovalva (TV story)|Castrovalva]]

This is cumbersome, however, and there's a fair chance one might make a typing error somewhere along the way. Thus the easier way to proceed is: 

[[Castrovalva (TV story)|]]

The pipe trick can also be used to get rid of namespace that precedes an article name. If you're on a talk page and you wish to refer to another user's name, you might type: 

[[User:ILoveDaleksWhenTheyCry|ILoveDaleksWhenTheyCry]]

but that's a lot of work. Instead, just type: 

[[User:ILoveDaleksWhenTheyCry|]]

Similarly, you might want to refer to an article outside mainspace. For instance, maybe you're arguing a stylistic point on a talk page, and you want to refer to Tardis:Manual of style. By typing: 

[[Tardis:Manual of style|]]

you end up with just Manual of style.

And then there are cases when you have a link that has both a namespace and a disambiguating parenthetical. The pipe trick can take care of this, too. This frequently happens when linking to a wikipedia article. You could type: 

[[wikipedia:Life on Mars (TV series)|Life on Mars]]

but why do that when 

[[wikipedia:Life on Mars (TV series)|]]

also gives you Life on Mars.

The "slash trick"

There are some pages here which have a number of subpages. A subpage is a page that branches off of the page one is currently viewing. If this page had a subpage about slash tricks, it would be in the format of Help:Wiki markup/Slash trick. This syntax, however, is how one would link to the subpage from any other page on the wiki. On this page only the same link could be generated by typing 

[[/Slash trick]]

When entered on this page, the preceding slash stands in for Help:Wiki markup. However, the result of typing in [[/Slash trick]] is the rather ugly /Slash trick, that includes the preceding slash. If one wanted to create a link that appeared on this page as just Slash trick, one could type: 

[[/Slash trick|Slash trick]]

However, this can be simplified even further by typing: 

[[/Slash trick/]]

This eliminates the preceding slash.

When you might not want to apply the slash trick

Generally, getting rid of preceding slashes is a great idea. But there are occasionally times when the preceding slash might need to be retained. A good example is Forum:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes where the preceding slashes emphasize to the reader that a subpage was being linked to, rather than a page in the main article space with the same name.

A suggested guideline is that if the subpage has the same name as a proper article in mainspace, retain the slash for clarity. Thus /The Chase versus The Chase.

Interwiki link

There are times when one might wish to link to another wikia. For example, if one wanted to talk about Michelle Ryan's character on The Bionic Woman, one could link to the article on The Bionic Wiki, instead of relying on Wikipedia. This can be achieved by the following syntax: 

[[w:c:nameofwiki:articlename|articlename]]
or, for this specific case,
[[w:c:bionic:Jaime Sommers (2007)|Jaime Sommers]]

Note that the pipe trick discussed above won't work as well on interwiki links because there are too many preceding colons. A pipe trick does this to an interwiki link: c:bionic:Jaime Sommers, which is close, but not really close enough. Thus, to make a "clean" link to an article on another link, one has to type out the whole thing, with replacement text, as shown immediately above.

How to figure out the name of a wiki

The real trick in performing interwiki links is knowing what is the true name of the wiki to which one is linking. For instance, we call ourselves "TARDIS Index File Wiki", but our true name is "tardis". Links to our article about Matt Smith from other wikias would be: 

[[w:c:tardis:Matt Smith|Matt Smith]]

The key to finding the true name is to look at the URL address in one's browser window. The name is almost always the word which precedes the word "wikia". The URL to the Doctor Who page at Wikisimpsons is http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who. This is the usual format for a wikia wiki. Thus: w:c:simpsons:Doctor Who is how you link to that page from within an article here at our wiki. Again, to clean it up a bit, you might type something like [[w:c:simpsons:Doctor Who|Doctor Who on ''The Simpsons'']]. This syntax will work in most cases. For instance, it works for linkage to all of our sister sites, thus:

Unfortunately, this isn't completely universal. Depending on the wiki's relationship to the wikia family of wikis, it might not be so straightforward. A prime example is Memory Alpha, the main Star Trek Wiki. The actual URL of its Doctor Who page is: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Doctor_Who. This is immediately confusing, because there's no reference to wikia at all in the URL. However, linkage to this page can still be achieved within an article here at this wiki. It is accomplished by w:c:memoryalpha:Doctor Who. In cases where the wiki URLs don't have the "wikia.com", you will have to search through that wiki's help files to find an article that tells you how to perform an interwiki link. Or you might have to ask an admin there for help. You can also try consulting the Interwiki link page at Wikia Central.

Even easier linking to "big" wikis

Some bigger wikis are even easier to link to. For some wikis, linkage is exactly like Wikipedia linkage.

To test whether the wiki is big enough to have its own prefix, enter wikiname:articlename in our search box on the top left of this page. If it takes you to the appropriate page, then you can use that syntax in a link. If it just creates a search error, then you have to use the w:c:wikiname:articlename syntax.

Beware the false blue link

Note that interwiki linking, whether by using a special prefix like [[wikipedia:articlename]] or the standard [[w:c:wikiname:articlename]] syntax, always produces a blue link. You must, therefore, go back and click the link you've made to ensure that it actually links properly. Just to illustrate, here are some obviously ridiculous page names that nevertheless appear to be valid links:

Sections

If an article is long enough, you can divide the page into different sections. The TARDIS Index File will automatically generate a table of contents based on the content for all articles with more than three sections.

You can also create a horizontal divider by using four dashes in a row.

What you type What you see
== Header Two == Header Two
=== Header Three === Header Three
==== Header Four ==== Header Four
----

Test

Blah

Images and other media

See: Help: Image markup

Tables

See: Help: Table markup


Templates

Using templates will save you a great deal of repetitive typing when listing information on different articles which fall under the same category, such as television stories or novels. Just go to the Templates page and scan down the list for the ones you need. Put {{template}} in your edit, replacing "template" with the name of the specific one you are using, such "Infobox CD". For infoboxes, you will need to fill in the specific information, such as director, writer, or broadcast date.

Mathematical formulae

See: Help: Math markup

Variables

The MediaWiki software has a number of built-in variables for common elements that may change depending on the date.

Code Effect
{{CURRENTMONTH}} 11
{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} November
{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} November
{{CURRENTDAY}} 14
{{CURRENTDAYNAME}} Thursday
{{CURRENTYEAR}} 2024
{{CURRENTTIME}} 03:39
{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} 114,049

NUMBEROFARTICLES is the number of pages in the main namespace which contain a link and are not a redirect (i.e. number of articles, stubs containing a link, and disambiguation pages).

See also: Help:Template

Suppressing markup

It's also possible to tell MediaWiki to ignore any of the above rules using a simple tag:

What you type What you see
<nowiki>'''text here'''</nowiki> '''text here'''
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